IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oec/ctpaaa/44-en.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Taxing vehicles, fuels, and road use: Opportunities for improving transport tax practice

Author

Listed:
  • Kurt van Dender

Abstract

This paper discusses the main external costs related to road transport and the design of taxes to manage them. It provides an overview of evolving tax practice in the European Union and the United States and identifies opportunities for better alignment of transport taxes with external costs. There is considerable scope for improving transport tax practice, notably by increasing the use of taxes based on road use. Distance charges offer great promise in delivering more efficient road transport. In heavily congested areas, targeted charges are a cost-effective way of reducing congestion. Fiscal objectives provide an impetus for change as improving vehicle fuel efficiency and fleet penetration of alternative fuel vehicles erode traditional tax bases, particularly those relating to fossil fuel use. A gradual shift from an energy-based approach towards distance-based transport taxes has the potential to establish a stable tax base in the road transport sector in the long run.

Suggested Citation

  • Kurt van Dender, 2019. "Taxing vehicles, fuels, and road use: Opportunities for improving transport tax practice," OECD Taxation Working Papers 44, OECD Publishing.
    • Handle: RePEc:oec:ctpaaa:44-en
    DOI: 10.1787/e7f1d771-en
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1787/e7f1d771-en
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1787/e7f1d771-en?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Victor-Gallardo, Luis & Zúñiga, Mónica Rodríguez & Quirós-Tortós, Jairo & Jaramillo, Marcela & Vogt-Schilb, Adrien, 2024. "Policy options to mitigate the fiscal impact of road transport decarbonization: Application to Costa Rica," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    2. Monica Rodriguez-Zúñiga & Luis Victor-Gallardo & Jairo Quiros-Tortos & Marcela Jaramillo & Adrien Vogt-Schilb, 2022. "Impacto fiscal de la descarbonización del transporte en Costa Rica y opciones de política para manejarlo," Working Papers halshs-03725604, HAL.
    3. Edenhofer, Ottmar & Flachsland, Christian & Kalkuhl, Matthias & Knopf, Brigitte & Pahle, Michael, 2019. "Optionen für eine CO2-Preisreform," Working Papers 04/2019, German Council of Economic Experts / Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung.
    4. Edward L. Glaeser & Caitlin S. Gorback & James M. Poterba, 2022. "How Regressive Are Mobility-Related User Fees and Gasoline Taxes?," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 37, pages 1-56, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Christine Lewis & Patrice Ollivaud, 2020. "Policies for Switzerland’s ageing society," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1600, OECD Publishing.
    6. Börjesson, Maria & Asplund, Disa & Hamilton, Carl, 2023. "Optimal kilometre tax for electric vehicles," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 52-64.
    7. Donald A. Chapman & Johan Eyckmans & Karel Van Acker, 2020. "Does Car-Sharing Reduce Car-Use? An Impact Evaluation of Car-Sharing in Flanders, Belgium," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(19), pages 1-27, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    congestion; congestion charging; distance-charges; external costs; fuel taxes; pollution; road transport;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy
    • R4 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics
    • R41 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - Transportation: Demand, Supply, and Congestion; Travel Time; Safety and Accidents; Transportation Noise
    • R48 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - Government Pricing and Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oec:ctpaaa:44-en. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ctoecfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.